Compare the reception of Ronald Biggs and the one of Peter Blake. See if you find a lesson:
My beloved dad, the train robber
All his life, Michael Biggs has come to the rescue of his father Ronnie in his life on the run. Then, when Biggs finally returned to England and jail, Michael faced his greatest challenge: to persuade the authorities to set him free. Simon Hattenstone followed their small gains and frequent setbacks in a turbulent year of campaigning
My beloved dad, the train robber, part II
Saturday January 17, 2004
The Guardian
Belmarsh prison, February 2003. The sniffer dog walks past Michael Biggs and allows him through. My turn. The dog sniffs and stops. The officer looks at me. "Sorry, no visit," he says, waving both of us away. Why not? "Drugs. The dog can smell drugs," he says. But I don't do drugs. "Doesn't matter," the officer says, "you may have been standing next to someone on the tube who has been smoking dope, and that's enough."
That's not fair, I say. The guard nods and apologises. Michael Biggs is struggling to get any words out. He fails, and bursts out crying. "I've got to see him. I've got to hug my dad." He's beyond comfort. Tears and snot are pouring down his face. "I may never see him again. Is there nothing you can do?"
Dad is Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber. And Michael is the beautiful little boy we saw in newspaper photographs all those years ago, playing on the beach in Rio with his father. Since he was born, the two have been inseparable. Michael often talks about how his father brought him up alone and showed him enough love for two parents. And it's true. But it's also true that time and again, just as Biggs looked as if he was on his way down, Michael has come to his rescue. He actually performed his first rescue act before he was born - the fact that Biggs's girlfriend Raimunda was pregnant with Michael enabled Ronnie to remain in Brazil when he was on the verge of being returned to a British prison in 1974. For the past two years, Michael has been trying to pull off his greatest rescue yet - to get his father out of a high-security prison and ultimately to secure his release. But time is running out. Biggs, now 73, is a very sick man. Last week he was rushed to hospital with pneumonia, a day later he was returned to Belmarsh. As Weekend went to press, he was back in hospital, critically ill.
It's strange that Biggs is known as the "great train robber" because if there is anything he's not great at, it is robbing. He was a useless thief, the last man you'd want with you on a job. He began by rummaging through the wreckage of bombed-out buildings in south London and helping himself to what he fancied. His first conviction was for thieving pencils. It was January 1945 and he was 15; over the next few years he was convicted nine times. He joined the RAF in 1947, but was dishonourably discharged after breaking into a chemist's - for which he received six months in prison. He was then jailed for stealing a car, and it was while serving this sentence that he befriended Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind behind the Great Train Robbery. In his autobiography, Odd Man Out, Biggs writes affectionately of the common interests that drew them together - music, literature and breaking the law.
Biggs was the last one to join the team. Nobody really wanted him - he had no special skill to offer and it was thought that he brought bad luck. In early 1963, Biggs, who had been going straight for a couple of years, approached Reynolds for a £500 loan with which he hoped to expand his joinery business. Reynolds refused the loan, but told him that if he could find a substitute driver to drive away the train, he was in. Biggs did find a retired driver, but unfortunately Old Pete was so past it that when he entered the cabin on August 8 1963, he couldn't move the train. (He told the robbers he was waiting for brake pressure to build, but they weren't prepared for any delay and ordered the train's original driver back into the driving seat under threat of another coshing.) Typical Biggs. But a deal was a deal and Biggs still received his share - £147,000 - for the robbery that had taken place on his 34th birthday. His task had been to escort Old Pete to and from the train.
The day before the robbery, Biggs had placed a £10 bet on two horses. Both came in and he won £500 - exactly the amount he needed to expand his business. He considered pulling out of the robbery, but knew it was too late. Anyway, he thought that would be dishonourable. There were 15 in the gang, plus old Pete, and they netted £2,631,784.
A month later Biggs was caught. Of course he was caught. Biggs was always caught. His fingerprints had been found on a Pyrex bowl, a bottle of ketchup and a Monopoly set found at Leatherslade Farm where the gang had unloaded the money and divided it up. Four of them managed to evade justice (Reynolds and Buster Edwards fled, but were later tracked down; two others, including Old Pete, were never caught), but Biggs and the rest were convicted. The names of the others are barely remembered, but then they never escaped from prison and gave it large in Rio.
The Great Train Robbers received unusually harsh sentences for their crime - conspiracy to stop a mail train with intent to rob, and robbery with aggravation. Yes, the driver Jack Mills had been struck, but no one had died. Indeed, he told reporters just after the accident that one of the robbers had bandaged his head and made him a cup of tea, and that they had all behaved "like gentlemen". There is a myth that Mills died from the blow he received to his head, but in fact he died seven years later from leukaemia, and the coroner said that the blow could not have contributed to his illness. Despite his limited involvement, Biggs received one of the toughest sentences - 30 years and 25 years on the two counts, to run concurrently. He served a total of 15 months before escaping.
The others were released from jail decades ago. Even Edwards and Reynolds were freed in 1975 and 1978 respectively. But Biggs started serving the major part of his sentence only two years ago, after 36 years on the run.
No one seems quite sure why Biggs returned from Brazil. He could have lived out his days in the sun, but there was something eating away at him, something that told him he had to come home, whatever the price. And he knew it would be a heavy one. He was old and wretched, he'd had two strokes and was a ghost of the man he'd once been, but the justice system doesn't bow to sentiment. He knew he would return to jail, but he assumed that with good behaviour, and once they'd made an example of him, they would allow him to die a free man.
Five minutes have passed since we were refused entry to the visiting room. The guard has been in negotiation. He returns. "OK, you can have a closed visit," he tells Michael. This means we can talk to Biggs from behind a glass window. Michael looks relieved. A door is unlocked and we are taken down a corridor where there is a booth with two seats, looking into a bare room.
Biggs walks in. He's a pitiful sight. Hobbling, bent, a plastic tube protruding from his stomach, a plaster on his cheek that is supposed to stop him dribbling (it doesn't). He carries an alphabet board which he uses for "talking". When he sees Michael, he breaks into a huge, sunny smile. He presses his hand against the window. Michael presses his hand against it, and despite his best efforts he starts to cry again.
"CHEER UP," Biggs spells out painstakingly on his alphabet board, pointing to each letter with his index finger. "DON'T CRY," he taps out.
"No, I won't. I'm not crying, Dad. Don't worry."
I feel as if I'm intruding, but Biggs makes me feel welcome, holding his hand towards me. "PUT THIS IN YOUR STORY," he taps, pointing to the glass screen and the closed room. Since having a third stroke in prison, Biggs has been unable to speak at all. Michael says they have worked out a way of communicating on the phone - he asks questions and Biggs grunts yes or no by way of an answer.
"Dad, have you got money?"
"YES. I'M FINE."
Biggs needs money for phone cards, but he never tells his son when he's running short. Then again, Michael never tells his father when he's running short. Which is all the time now. The money Biggs received from the Sun for flying him back to England and covering the story exclusively has long run out. So has the newspaper's support.
"How much money have you got, Dad?" he asks.
"TEN POUNDS."
"Ten pounds!" Michael explodes. "But I'm going to be away for three weeks. That won't last." He's due to leave for Brazil tomorrow to see his family for the first time in two years. "How are the scabies, Dad?"
Biggs gives a thumbs up.
"Have you been bathed today?"
"YES."
"How often are they bathing you, Dad?"
"EVERY TWO DAYS."
"Well, that's better." Michael says in the past they have left him for 10 days without a bath or shower.
He tells Biggs that he has heard nothing from the Legal Aid Board. Biggs is reliant on legal aid to challenge the criminal cases review commission's ruling that the sentence he received in 1963 is a fair one. He listens, expressionless, before changing the subject to something happier.
"GUESS WHO VISITED?" he taps. It's hard to follow the tapping, and frustrating for him. Sometimes he will gesticulate and point in a Give Us A Clue kind of way. "PHILIPPA, THE THERAPIST. SHE IS PREGNANT." He makes a huge pregant belly with his hands. "IT'S GOING TO BE A BIG BABY. PIG BALLS." And he laughs so hard he begins to cry.
Michael tells him how the dog stopped me, and that's why it had to be a closed visit.
"ARE YOU A POTHEAD?" he taps, with a grin.
No, I say.
"DO YOU LIKE A DRINK?"
Yes, do you?
He points to the tube and lifts up his orange prison top. "YES. BUT NOT ANY MORE."
I'd forgotten. Biggs can take in food and drink only through the tube.
How often do you get fed?
"ONCE A DAY."
Are you hungry?
"YES. BUT I'M USED TO IT."
When he arrived back in England, the Sun showed off their shocking, exclusive pictures of Ronnie Biggs in his wheelchair. And yes, it was true he was weak and infirm and had trouble speaking, but he was stronger than today's Biggs. Michael tallies his ailments - three strokes, three epileptic seizures, two minor heart attacks, three stomach ulcers, scabies. "And he's not getting any checks from doctors. He had scabies, and for three months he was scratching himself till he was bleeding before somebody called a doctor in."
What does he think of England now?
"SHITHOLE."
I ask him why he was so desperate to return. He tries to explain, but it's too complicated to answer by alphabet board or scribbled words. Michael takes over. In the early 90s, he was fine in Rio - he wrote his autobiography and even advised on security for the Earth Summit in 1992. But he became depressed after the first stroke, and turned in on himself. He longed for home, even though it wasn't home any more really - he had no family left here. "He was just an Englishman wanting to come home," Michael says. "And he wanted to close a chapter; he didn't want to die a fugitive."
Did Michael want his father to return? "No, no. If I had my way we'd still be in Brazil... but he was so unhappy. He could barely talk, couldn't read, couldn't write properly. I thought my daughter's birth would perk him up, but he just spelt out on his board, 'I can't even pick her up, I can't even give her a kiss because I'm dribbling all the time.' He said, 'I love my grandchild, but I want to have something to live for.' " Michael looks down the prison corridor. "And this is what he's had to live for - the fight. My dad didn't want to go down as the sick, frail old man who died in South America. He's always been a proud man - in his stance, if I'm going down, I'm going down fighting, I'm going down like a man."
Biggs also wanted to return because he believed he'd suffered an injustice, and he wanted to right it. Not injustice in that he was innocent, but injustice in that he received such an extreme sentence. "He saw paedophiles in Britain were getting four or five years, and then getting protection when they got out of jail. My father said, no, this isn't fair." It's a refrain I'm to hear time and again over the months from Michael Biggs. He can cite any number of inconsistencies within the justice system: the rapists, the murderers, the terrorists who received lesser sentences than Biggs.
"It's a known fact that my father never even set foot on that train, but they still feel that 30 years is a fair sentence. My father is now paying a price for his name more than for the crime that he committed. Even Buster only got 14 years, and he was known as one of the ringleaders and was in charge of counting all the money."
It's extraordinary how this one event, the train robbery that happened 11 years before he was born, has shaped Michael Biggs's life. And now that his father can no longer tell his side of the story, he has become his voice.
On July 8 1965, a year after he was moved to Wandsworth prison, an appeal having failed, Biggs escaped. He climbed a wall, jumped into a waiting van, crossed the Channel in a cargo ship to Antwerp, then went on to Paris where he had plastic surgery. In December that year, he flew to Sydney and then moved on to Adelaide. Biggs spent £56,000 on escape, transport and surgery. Within three years, the rest of the robbery loot had gone - most of it taken by "minders", or lost in poor investments.
In Adelaide he worked at a guesthouse, where he eventually became a partner. In June 1966, his first wife, Charmian, and their two children arrived in Australia. Although Charmian worked as a waitress, they failed to make ends meet, so Biggs set up as a carpenter, roofing contractor and furniture maker under the name Terry Cook. A year later, their third child, Farley Paul, was born, and Biggs received information that the police had discovered his whereabouts. The family moved to Melbourne and adopted another new name. He got a job as a carpenter and Charmian did night work in a factory.
In October 1969, a photograph of Biggs was published in Australian newspapers, and he and Charmian agreed that it was best if he disappeared. With money provided by her selling her story to an Australian newspaper, Biggs sailed to Panama and then flew on to Brazil, where he lived in Rio under another alias. He began a relationship with an exotic dancer called Raimunda de Castro, and in 1974 Michael was born. |
